Barnaby Joyce’s Pet Climate Scientist Destroyed by British Journalist

Sweet, sweet relief.

Obviously, everybody who doesn’t believe their own eyes when they look at the world outside their window will continue to believe that climate change isn’t happening. Or, like the leading edge of backpedalling climate sceptics, like Liberal leader Tony Abbott or Nationals bogan hero Barnaby Joyce, they will nuance their position.

That goes something like this, “Well, yes, the climate is changing. We can clearly see that now, and the science supports the fact that the climate is changing. But human activity and human sourced carbon emissions have nothing to do with it.” The cleverness of this position is that on first contact, it’s almost utterly confounding. The weakness, though, is that it’s utter bollocks.

Locally, one of its main protagonists is Ian Plimer. Although he can be introduced as a scientist, it is worth remembering that Carrot Top can be introduced as a comedian. Nationals Senator, wildman maverick Barnaby Joyce had taken Plimer on outback tours, using him to convince community halls full of farmers and rural folk that extreme droughts, bushfires, and floods aren’t consequences of global warming but part of a filthy communist plot led by Emperor Kevin Rudd and his pinko allies Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe. Really.

One of Plimer’s regularly regurgitated matter-of-factoids is that human activity only accounts for 5% of atmospheric carbon. Joyce elaborates on this claim by arguing that even if Australia went completely carbon-free, cutting out 1.6% of 5% won’t actually do anything for the environment, apart from kill farmers, rape the economy, and eat babies.

As it happens, Plimer finally stuck his head up in a less-than-entirely-sympathetic forum this week, accepting an invite to appear on Lateline, hosted by Tony Jones and facing off against British activist, journalist, environmentalist, and self-directed deep thinker George Monbiot. Plimer had originally been elevated to wide attention in Britain by Daily Telegraph-esque agenda rag The Spectator. That publication had been due to host a public debate between Plimer and Monbiot, but with 4 days to go pulled the plug and instead ran a solo show by the science sceptic Plimer.

It seems that Plimer had either lacked ability or compulsion to respond to Monbiot’s detailed challenges over numerous claims and misrepresentations made in his book refuting the entire body of climate science. Hilariously, Plimer’s book is titled Heaven and Earth – Global Warming: the missing science.

Why is it so frequently the case that people who have no problem believing in Heaven feel that the global warming demands some insurmountable leap of faith?

Anyway, enough said. Here is Monbiot’s account of the Lateline appearance and its aftermath, here is the Lateline transcript of the show. There are links on the righthand side of the page to streaming video of the encounter, which you’ll need to click according to your bandwidth or time constraints.

I hope Climate Change Minister Penny Wong gets around to watching this… although she has disappeared into a world where 50% emission reductions by 2050 will save the planet and its species, even though all credible science demands at least 40% reductions by 2020 and 80% by 2050 if we’d like to see the planet only very damaged.